While the slower summer and fall months might feel like much-needed downtime for tanning business owners, they actually offer a prime opportunity to review, evaluate, and address various aspects of the business. This period can be used strategically to ensure that the business remains competitive, efficient, and prepared for busier seasons.

The summer and fall is also the time to look more intently at the things you can accomplish now that you won’t have time for later. Those items can be as simple as deep cleaning, maintenance and sprucing up your space, or as complicated as introducing a new service or completely overhauling your training protocol.

Here are some critical areas that tanning business owners should focus on during these slower periods.

1. Business Performance Review

Financial Analysis: Conduct a thorough review of financial statements, including profit and loss, cash flow, and balance sheets. Identify trends, evaluate the profitability of services, and determine areas where expenses can be reduced.

Sales Data Analysis: By analyzing data on your customers, sales, marketing efforts and more, you can pinpoint the areas where changes are needed and increase the likelihood of your efforts paying off. With your salon management software, it’s all right in front of you. If you know what to look for, the data will tell you the whole story of where your business is headed and what you need to do to improve the trajectory.

Taking time to analyze your overall sales analytics and how you can adjust pricing and purchasing options to benefit both strong and weak points of your business is a vital consideration. Memberships are the most important factor for most tanning businesses today, but it’s worth digging into every type of sale, including, sessions, packages and even upgrades. Don’t just consider what purchasing options are not performing well – if some of your options are performing almost too well, that likely means your price is too low and you’re leaving money on the table.

Inventory Management: Evaluate product inventory levels and turnover rates. Ensure that the stock of tanning and skin care products is optimized to reduce holding costs while meeting customer demand efficiently. The first step to selling more and avoiding excessive discounting is having the right selection.

Don’t just look at which products performed well and which didn’t. Try to figure out why. Are you focusing on the wrong price points? Is there too much overlap? By understanding why, you can begin to formulate a plan for your purchases in the fall, even if you don’t know the specific products yet.

Examine analytics based on price points as well as individual products. Also look at the customer side: Segment your customers by how much they spend on individual products as well as product spending for the whole year and also look at preferences between demographics. But if you’re not happy with your product sales overall, the problem is most likely rooted in issues with marketing, sales approach or staff motivation.

2. Customer Feedback and Engagement

Feedback Collection: When you’re consumed by everyday tasks, it can be easy to overlook the big picture items. The more eyes you have on these things, the better. Take the opportunity to sit down with everybody you can to gauge what they see, and maybe even consult with some clients you’re close to, so you can get a separate perspective.

Use surveys, social media, and in-person interactions to gather customer feedback. Understanding customer satisfaction and areas for improvement can guide service enhancements.

Loyalty Programs: Assess the effectiveness of existing loyalty programs. Consider implementing or revamping reward systems to increase customer retention and encourage repeat business.

Marketing Strategies: Review and update marketing strategies. Analyze the effectiveness of past campaigns and plan new initiatives, such as promotions or partnerships, to attract new customers and retain existing ones.

Right now, one of the best ways to make more money is communicating with your current customer base with targeted promotions. By categorizing your customers based on their purchasing habits, you can improve your text and email marketing by personalizing messaging and offering something you know they’ll be interested in. And you can also elevate your social and search marketing by breaking down habits by demographics and to refine your targeting for different offers on Facebook, Instagram and Google.

For all of your marketing efforts, analyzing the results of your campaigns and adjusting accordingly is the most important factor for long-term success. Most salons report utilizing primarily digital marketing options today, and that’s great for this conversation because those efforts are easiest to track. You receive detailed analytics that tell you everything you need to know, Then, you just need to follow through on the back end and track how many times each ad produced the desired result in the salon. Use your extra time this summer and fall to consult the appropriate data and formulate your marketing plans for the future.

3. Staff Training and Development

Skill Enhancement: Use the slower months to conduct staff training sessions. Focus on customer service skills and sales techniques.

Most tanning businesses will have new employees working for them during busy season that they haven’t even started looking for now. So, how are you supposed to prepare staff for the future now? First, you can ensure that your go-to, long-standing employees are continuing to learn and improve so they can thrive and lead the way when new staff members are hired.

Your current employees have presumably been around a while, and they’ve certainly been trained on the essentials. So, what does more advanced training entail? It could definitely include some more managerial and operational duties – preparing them to help shepherd in new staff later – but your biggest growth potential will always come back to selling. You’ll still have to identify the right ways to train and motivate them to succeed, but the first step is to understand if there’s something wrong with your overall approach so you can make pricing or purchasing option changes and communicate with your entire staff about strategic adjustments.

Then, start to consider each employee individually. You surely have a good idea who’s performing well and who’s not but take a closer look to try to identify how you can help the stragglers. Coaching each staff member individually to improve their problem areas should be more effective than just conveying general sales techniques.

Staff Reviews: Conduct performance reviews to provide feedback and set goals for employees. This helps in maintaining high service standards and motivating the team.

Team Building: Organize team-building activities to strengthen team cohesion and morale, which can positively impact customer service and overall business performance.

Hiring Strategies and Techniques: Evaluate your past experiences with hiring and training, and develop and adjust your training protocol for the future accordingly. Continued sales and customer service training for your current employees will also help you nail down your plan to train new hires on selling more efficiently.

4. Facility and Equipment Maintenance

Equipment Inspection: Regularly inspect and service tanning beds and other equipment to ensure they are in optimal working condition. Preventative maintenance can reduce the risk of breakdowns during peak periods.

Facility Upgrades: Evaluate the need for any facility upgrades or renovations. Improvements in aesthetics and functionality can enhance the customer experience and give the business a competitive edge.

With most tanning businesses now embracing a more diversified service offering, creating a more relaxing, spa-like experience is often preferred. Many salons will be highly limited in what they can alter as far as space and layout, but there are plenty of more practical moves you can make to move toward a more relaxing and high-class atmosphere without compromising your business’s current identity and what’s working for you. When prioritizing your efforts, it makes sense to first think about the spa service rooms, and many of the concepts can also be applied to tanning rooms.

Enhancing the aesthetics of your salon is more affordable than ever today. Vinyl flooring is affordable and visually appealing. Easy-to-apply peel-and-stick wall coverings with faux marble or other materials can give a luxurious impression at a minimal cost. Small touches like your mirrors, chairs, pillows, and art can also make a difference. On the more significant side, adding drop ceilings to spa rooms that don’t need ventilation can be a big plus.

Tanning Equipment Upgrades: You first need to know your revenue per room to make important investment and pricing decisions. Before making a major investment, first try to determine if any tanning levels that are struggling could be fixed with adjustments to pricing, marketing or sales strategies. But, in today’s modern tanning market, many successful operators are making the vast majority of their money off their best equipment and most expensive memberships, and they’re finding that their base-level units are taking up more space than they’re worth and replacing them with premium tanning options.

5. Industry Trends

Market Research: Stay updated with industry trends, including new tanning technologies, products, and customer preferences. Adapting to trends can help in staying competitive. Along with keeping up with this magazine and training and educational information from your product vendors, going to industry events has long been among the best ways to stay in touch with the tanning community.

Diversification: Explore additional opportunities for diversification. This could include offering complementary services such as spa and wellness services, skincare treatments, fitness programs, or retail products to attract a broader customer base.

6. Strategic Planning and Goal Setting

Business Plan Review: Revisit the business plan to assess progress toward goals and make necessary adjustments. Set new short-term and long-term objectives based on the analysis of business performance and market conditions.

SWOT Analysis: Conduct a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis to identify internal and external factors affecting the business. Use this analysis to develop strategies that leverage strengths and opportunities while addressing weaknesses and threats.